"What the Rise of Apocalyptic Thinking Tells Us About America"

On today's show, we speak with the writer and new-media strategist Mathew Gross, who (along with Mel Gilles) is one of the two authors of a thought-provoking and quite timely non-fiction book called "The Last Myth: What the Rise of Apocalyptic Thinking Tells Us About America." It's an engaging historical study that mainly explores two separate yet related queries: "Why are contemporary Americans so obsessed with the end of the world?" and "What does this obsession actually say about us, as a people?" Did you know, for example, that nearly 60 percent of Americans believe that the events foretold in the Book of Revelation will come true? From Y2K and 9/11 to global warming and the demise of humanity asserted by the Mayan calendar, anticipating the apocalypse has moved from being a cultish worldview in this country to a fairly mainstream mindset. How the heck did this happen, you ask? That's the key question behind today's edition of StudioTulsa.